Maine again backs ranked-choice voting

The Bangor Daily News and Decision Desk HQ called the race just after midnight Wednesday. With a majority of key precincts reporting, the “yes” vote held a solid lead with 55 percent of the total vote.

Ranked-choice voting has been on a roller coaster ever since being enacted by referendum in November 2016. Opposition was fueled in May 2017 when an advisory opinion from the Maine Supreme Judicial Court said the system was partially unconstitutional because of language in the Maine Constitution that calls for general elections in Maine to be decided by pluralities.

Opposition began to mount in the Legislature, where the issue turned partisan, with Democrats generally supportive of the voting method and Republicans opposed. Neither side was able to achieve a supermajority for either starting the process of amending the constitution or scrapping the concept altogether, resulting in the October 2017 passage of a bill that called for either a constitutional amendment by December 2021 or for ranked-choice voting to cease for good.

1. Idiotic system of elections where a single politician gets to "certify" the results, or not.

What if, say, Putin lost an election and he could just not certify it...only the judicial branch stands n the way of this not correct way to do things...correct way is an independent election commission.

4. You should do some research.

Ranked choice is not a gimmick. It is used in other countries quite successfully. It eliminates the farce of “first past the poll” plurality elections where a candidate can get elected with less than 50% of the vote.

8. exactly

5. Go Maine!

Now we just need them to fix this so we can use it in the general election for governor, state senator, and state representative. For those who don't get why Mainers want this, we pretty always have independents that run, which results in splitting the votes 3 or more ways. LePage is a very unpopular governor, but he got elected twice with less than 50% of the vote each time. Plurality voting gives us unpopular and sometimes even extremist elected officials. Ranked choice gives us instant run off elections when no one has at least 50% of the vote.